Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

“There are five Level Twos. I am Two-Four, in order of spawning. There is one Level One, and she is The One.” The little legs propelled Two-Four off the table and into water that rose to cover the carapace. Eyestalks poked up above the surface, and the translator gurgled, “Come.”

The Malacostracan headed toward the far end of the building. It seemed to Friday, following, that there was no exit that way. The alien pointed the black cane at the wall. It became transparent, and Two-Four sidled through. Friday followed, eyeing the cane. His respect for it was rising. It didn’t just zap people, it zapped whole buildings. And when you walked through the wall, you weren’t where you would expect to be, outside in the gusty night air of Limbo where the patrol guards were waiting. You were in another interior chamber, too big to fit inside any of the buildings that he had seen. This one was also well-lit, throwing gleaming iridescent reflections of green and purple and black off the carapace of the little Malacostracan. Also, a pleasant change, the floor wasn’t sloshing with water.

How could that be, when this was on the same level as the other room? Friday looked back, and found the wall opaque again. He turned, to see Two-Four inching forward, its body touching the floor and its multiple legs splayed wide. The translator said urgently, “ Abase, abase! ”

He couldn’t imitate that walk, even if he wanted to. Friday stayed at his full height and stared. This room was stranger and yet more familiar than anything he had seen so far. The display screens and holo-volumes suggested a command center, but they sat far up toward the three-meter-high ceiling, where he could view them only by craning his neck backward. On the other hand, the banks of dials and switches that presumably controlled the displays formed part of the floor. He couldn’t even read or reach most of the dials and switches without stepping on some of them.

Other than himself and Two-Four he saw no sign of any living thing, Malacostracan or other, in the room. But the floor controls were arranged in concentric circles, and at the center of them stood a large black rock. It was bulky, half as tall again as Friday, and the lower part was riddled with holes big enough to put your hand in.

Two-Four said to Friday, “Stay. And abase, abase.” It advanced cautiously to the outer perimeter of the control area. There it produced a long series of squeaks and whistles, totally unlike the clicks and clatters of its previous speech. Friday’s translator unit remained silent. He guessed that it was using a different language from any that his unit had met before. Worse than that, his translator didn’t even seem to be trying. It wasn’t providing even the preliminary hoots and whistles that preceded intelligible words.

The black rock offered its own set of squeaks. The Level Two Malacostracan squeaked and whistled again, presumably in reply. Then it was another long sequence from the rock. The talk, assuming that’s what it was, went on and on. Friday’s translator remained silent, and finally he stopped listening to nothing and began to take a closer look at the half-dozen ceiling displays.

He might be deep underground at the moment, but the screens provided a view from above the surface. Two of them showed the cloudless night sky of Limbo, with its baffling collection of faint and diffuse spheres. The hints of color were not as he remembered them, but that was probably a function of sensors matched to suit alien eyes.

Other screens showed land views. He recognized one of them, or at least he could guess what it showed. It was the view to the west, seen from the rocky ridge above the inlet where the Mood Indigo had been driven by the storm. The image had been photo-intensified to make use of faint levels of light. It showed shades of gray and negligible color, but he fancied he could discern the outline of a ship’s hull, jutting above the waters of the inlet. The storm had passed, and the waves that met the Mood Indigo were slow and steady. He wondered how well his ship had survived. Would it still be able to make a Link transition, assuming he could somehow find a Link entry point?

He turned his attention to the remaining three screens. Two of them provided nothing of special interest. They were land views, bare jagged rocks and ridges and graveled slopes. The final screen, though, made him forget the ache in his neck.

It was another land view, but in this one the hills and valleys were not bare. They were clothed with vegetation — odd-looking forms, all twists and spikes, but no stranger than many of the plants found on Earth or other worlds of the Stellar Group.

Friday snorted aloud. So much for that fat idiot Rombelle, and what he “knew” as scientific fact! No plants on the land surface of Limbo, because on a planet orbiting a blue-giant star they didn’t have enough time to emerge from the sea? Sure. Facts my ass. Those were plants on the display, and he, Friday Indigo, was willing to bet on it.

“Alien air-breather!” The sudden words from the translation unit brought Friday’s attention back to ground level. The black rock sat immobile as ever. The words were being translated from sounds emitted by Two-Four. “Pay attention.”

“I’m listening.” At least it had stopped all the “Abase, abase,” nonsense. “I told you my name, you know. It’s not alien air-breather, it’s Friday Indigo.”

“Air-breather.” The eyestalks waved, and the Malacostracan continued as though Friday had not spoken. “The One has been made aware of your proposal for cooperation. The One desires to know more, and is willing to discuss it with you. However, there are three problems. First, Level One speech is too advanced for your primitive device.” A black pincer reached forward and touched the translation unit. “Communication through this would be as unproductive as an attempt at reasoned speech with a Level Four. Something better is needed.

“Second, The One requires additional evidence that you and your kind have something to offer. We have observed your feeble attempts to spy on our surface activities, and are in the process of neutralizing those orbiters. We anticipate no difficulty in doing so. The One declares the orbiters to be undefended and therefore primitive. If that represents your best level of technology, it is of little or no value. Do you wish to comment?”

“No.” Orbiters? That was news to Friday. But it was good news. Somebody or something on one of the ships had found a way off the surface of Limbo and into space. All the riches in the universe were no good if you had no way of taking them home. On the other hand, “undefended” in the eyes of the Malacostracans apparently equated to “primitive.” That was a clue to their outlook on life, and not an encouraging one.

Two-Four was continuing, “Third, The One believes that you and your kind are in a poor position for negotiation of any kind. We created and we control the sea-sky portal that you refer to as the Link . Without the Link, you will remain here on this world until you and all your spawn are dead. Do you understand?”

Friday nodded, then realized that was no use to the translation unit and said, “Yes, I understand.” He wasn’t much worried about his spawn at the moment. More on his mind was his own immediate future and the split and dried bodies of the bubble people. “I think you’re wrong about our technology, though. It’s just not represented in the equipment we brought with us. There’s a tremendous amount of information in our ships’ data bases, about all sorts of things. Everything from astrophysics to zoology. It’s not possible that you already know all of it, and without our help you’d never be able to figure out how to get into the data bases.”